PXI Newsletter

Newsletter: PXI-based Radio Communications Testing			4/19/2011
IN THIS ISSUE
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From Bob Helsel, Editor of the PXI Newsletter:

Welcome to the April edition of the PXI Newsletter. Our intent is to educate and inform you about how the PXI standard is being used in modular test systems for a wide variety of industries.

PXI Express Backplane
The PXI Express backplane integrates PCI Express while still preserving compatibility with current PXI modules. Users benefit from increasing bandwidth while maintaining backward compatibility with existing systems. PXI Express specifies hybrid slots to deliver signals for both PCI and PCI Express. With PCI Express electrical lines connecting the system slot controller to the hybrid slots of the backplane, PXI Express provides a high bandwidth path from the controller to backplane slots. Using an inexpensive PCI Express-to-PCI bridge, PXI Express provides PCI signaling to all PXI and PXI Express slots to ensure compatibility with PXI modules on the backplane. With the ability to support up to a x16 PCI Express link in addition to a x8 link, the system controller slot provides a total of 6 GB/s bandwidth to the PXI Express backplane, representing more than a 45X improvement in PXI backplane throughput.

This month, our main article is PXI-based Radio Communications Testing, which shows you how to reduce the size of your test bench as well as the cost. Our second article, Accelerating Software Development for PXI Applications with Modern Instrument Consoles, focuses on connecting and controlling instruments in PXI applications more efficiently. In the New PXI Products section, we are showcasing PXI products recently released by members of the PXI Systems Alliance.

Thanks to Agilent Technologies, our sponsor for this month's issue.

Visit http://www.pxisa.org for more information.

New PXI products

The PXI platform continues its explosive growth with many new product introductions. New products introduced in the last three months include (listed in the order received):

NI PXI Express Synchronization Module
NI Introduces Industry’s Highest Performance PXI Express Synchronization Module

Pickering PXI SP4T RF Multiplexer
Pickering has added to its range of RF switching solutions with the introduction of the 40-755 50 ohm RF multiplexer.

Agilent PXI Modular Arbitrary Waveform Generators
The Agilent M9330A and M9331A are wide-bandwidth arbitrary waveform generators (AWG).

Main Article

PXI-based Radio Communications Testing

Reduce the size of your test bench at the same time you reduce cost, while facilitating seamless automation.

Introduction
General radio communications testing often requires a suite of tests for design verification and/or manufacturing test which demand multiple pieces of test equipment, often coupled with hundreds of data point measurements requiring automation to acquire and process the data. One cost-effective solution is to integrate as many of these test functions as possible into one instrument such as a Radio Test Set or Communications Monitor.

Such customized equipment is available for a wide range of communication standards from Professional Mobile Radio (PMR) or Land Mobile Radio (LMR) (which includes the likes of Tetra, P-25, HPD, and MOTOTRBO, as well as legacy AM, FM, and SSB) to WiFi, WiMAX, and cell phone formats such as WCDMA and GSM. Even where a highly integrated instrument such as a RTS is used, however, there are still a handfull of common tests requiring extra signal generators or advanced analysis features in order to appropriately and completely characterize and/or validate radio conformance to a given applicable standard. Due to the miniaturization and integration capabilities of PXI-based instrumentation, systems which up until now have been cumbersome both in size and programmability may be consolidated to make them not just smaller but surprisingly portable, more technically integrated, and potentially quite a bit
faster.

Thanks to all our readers.
Bob Helsel, Editor
www.pxisa.org

Application Article

Accelerating Software Development for PXI Applications
with Modern Instrument Consoles

by Deborah Homan, Agilent Technologies

As instruments, I/O interfaces and computers have evolved, the software tools to connect and control instrumentation have become integral to the development process. Modern system consoles such as National Instruments Measurement Explorer (NI-MAX) and Agilent Connection Expert (ACE) provide utilities and tools to automate testing and verification procedures. The key challenges for developers include trying to find the right software for the instruments, making the right connection between the instruments and the PC, and then being able to send and receive commands to the instruments in order to accomplish the REAL work at hand such as verifying a design or automating a test procedure. But most important is the need to accelerate this process.

This challenge has driven the need for modern system consoles. The tools available today have a Graphical User Interface (GUI) that offers support for exploration, configuration management, connectivity views of instruments as well as control and command capability. Many test configurations include a range of interfaces and types of instrumentation that need to be discovered and controlled as a system regardless of the form factor or instrument I/O. It is quite common to have new PXI test systems coexisting with traditional instruments.